The Gaki
by YOURxHUMBLExNarrator
Summary: A nightmare creature has come to New York City, and its target is the Turtles. But how can they battle an enemy that can only be defeated by itself? O/C's, some romance, lots of blood and gore, mystery, and homemade watermelon wine.
1. Prologue: New York City, Six Years Ago

**The Gaki**

**By: Your Humble Narrator**

**Disclaimer:**

**I do not claim ownership of the TMNT, associated comic book/television/movie characters, situations, or ideas. **

**I claim only the original characters:**

**Hope Guthrie  
December Gotter  
Ruby McCoun  
Kate Poverelli**

…**and any associated original characters therein. No monetary exchange has or will take place for this story, in whole or in part.**

* * *

Prologue

New York City, Six Years Ago

_It's good to run._

_July in New York can be oppressive. Heat and humidity make the air charged, but no rain falls. Everyone looks skyward, wishing for relief, and none comes._

_In the sewer, it's even worse._

_Leonardo runs. He hears his brothers behind him, fast, in formation, and knows they love the speed and endurance as well. The heat, the need for relief, is too great. Splinter gives the boys permission, and they run._

_Across the rooftops that are their roadways, from building to building, they run, leap; they practically fly, from their home to Central Park._

_Thunder shakes the air around them. Leo pauses, looks up._

_Raph beside him now. Donnie behind, Mike next to Don. They all look heavenward. _

_Clouds thicken. Another peal of thunder, the first bolt of lightning._

"_God, I hope it rains," Raph whispers. "I'm gettin' sick of the heat."_

"_I know," Leo agrees with him. "Let's go."_

_Back on their feet, they run, briefly illuminated in another bolt of lightning, and then the first few drops hit them._

_They start slow, a drizzle. The boys dart between the raindrops, laughing, making a game of it, as they hit the trees and clamber up into them._

_From their vantage point, they watch as a sheet of rain forms at the edge of the park opposite them. It advances fast, like a curtain, and in a moment they're drenched in the downpour._

_Cold rain chills the night air. "Split up," Leo tells his brothers over the roar. "Raph and I will head west, you two head east."_

_A crack of thunder deafens them._

"_Do we get bonus points if we get struck by lightning, Fearless Leader?" Mike asks. He bounces from foot to foot as he tries to maintain his balance in the awkward branches. The smile on his face lights up their hiding spot as brightly as the lighting does._

_Leo smiles back. When Mikey smiles, you can't help it. "Try to avoid that if possible. We'll meet back here in an hour."_

_Donnie shrugs and Mikey mock-salutes him, both happy to be out in the rain again. They take off. Leo watches them go._

"_So, _do _we get bonus points if we get 'lectrocuted?" Raph asks. April would say his dander is up. Thunderstorms do that to him. Too much energy in the air. Right now, there's so much, even Leo feels edgy. _

_Leo grins at his brother. "No."_

"_Well, damn, there go my goals for the night."_

"_Come on." Leo dares to give in to his impulse, just this once. He's fifteen, he's young, and he hasn't learned the rock-solid control he yearns for yet. "Let's see if we can find some heads to bust!"_

"_Now yer talkin'!" Raph thumps his shoulder once and slips from the tree branches, landing solidly on his feet before taking off at a run. Leo is on his heels, a half-second behind. They do not fear being caught. Darkness is their companion, the night their friend, the curtains of rain their cloak._

_Leo tags his brother, smacking his arm once, lightly. "You can't move any faster than that?" He doubles his speed, racing on ahead, and Raph laughingly gives chase._

_The park is their playground. Serious business, patrolling the park, but not tonight. Tonight, it's the rain. Thunder cracks, Raph smacks his shell, and Leo turns and blocks his brother's hand. An invitation to spar, like a cat sidling up sideways and inviting a mouse to play._

_Only Raphael is no mouse. They meet, hand to hand. No need for live steel tonight. Raph catches him, flips his brother over, landing him shell-down in the mud. Leo kicks out to trip his sib, dragging him down as well. Sparring degenerates into a wrestling match that ends with Leo hooting his victory and running away before his brother tries taking a piece of his shell out for it._

_Despite their match, both are on edge, still crackling with as much energy as the bolt of lightning that turns the sky brilliant white for a moment. In that flash, Leo sees her, and stops running._

_He doesn't know if he's been seen as well, but better not take the chance. Raph's hand on his shoulder. He reaches out and presses his palm to his brother's plastron, then scrambles up the nearest tree. His brother follows suit._

_They sit, watching the ground below. She is not a ninja, so it's not surprising that they can see her, despite the darkness._

_She is short, thin, and un-developed. Probably twelve years old. Her hair is dark and plastered to her scalp, running down the middle of her back. The skirts she wears, heavy with water, come to her ankles, and the blue long-sleeved blouse looks uncomfortably drenched. She walks slowly, gracefully. Leo follows her with his eyes._

"_Who the hell wears a turtleneck in the middle of July?" he hears Raph ask._

_Anything else Raph might have said is lost. Leo watches her walk so perfectly, with poise and grace and a silence that is like the air just before lightning spears it – fraught. His breathing speeds. "She's beautiful."_

"_You're a nut, yanno that?"_

"_Look at her, Raph! She's lovely."_

"_Bro, she's walkin' around in the rain inna skirt an' turtleneck. In _July_! Get a grip, Leo!"_

_Leo doesn't. He watches her walk._

"_Hey. Take a picture. It'll last longer." He ignores his brother, wishing Raph would just go away. "Come on, Fearless. We got work ta do."_

"_Raph?"_

"_What?"_

"_Have you ever been in love?"_

"What?!"

"_Have you?"_

_Raphael's silence is also fraught. Leo waits. The air, the tension, the need for lightning to strike… "Apirl."_

"_I know. She's beautiful, too."_

"_She got Casey. An' she's a lot older 'en me."_

"_When did you know you loved her?"_

_The sky is black canvas. Leo looks away from the girl in black and gazes up, imagining Raphael's thoughts. "We cut through the park, 'member? The cops chasin' us? She's cryin', 'cause we don' know what's goin' on, why they're after us, an' she's scared she's hurt someone drivin' like that. I think… maybe… I loved her 'fore that, but that's when I knew it."_

"_Because you really saw exactly who she was then."_

"_Right. 'Xactly."_

_Leo nods slowly. He looks at the girl walking, and knows exactly who she is. "Raph?"_

"_Yeah?"_

"_She'd have been better off with you." He looks to his brother, and meets his troubled eyes._

_Raph looks uneasy, and then angry. "Whatever. Let's go." He doesn't wait for Leo. The fun has gone out of their run. Leo tenses, wishing again that Raph would fight this anger more, instead of giving in to it all the time. He wishes that April had seen his brother, instead of looking past him and seeing only Casey Jones. He wishes the rain would never end. And he wishes, while he's at it, that the girl in black would call out to him and say hello. He'd answer, even though he shouldn't. But he's the good son, and she doesn't see them. The fun is gone, but the rain hasn't ended. _

_Jumping from the tree, Leo tackles his brother into the mud again, then bolts away, laughing. Raph yells and gives chase, and things are good again, for a while._

_Maybe he can't have every wish granted, but life goes on anyway, and it's a good life._


	2. Chapter 1: Hope

Chapter 1

Hope

"Okay, class, everybody settle down, yes, there's a new girl. You can gawk at her after I've humiliated all of you in front of her. Hands up: who actually did the assignment last night?"

Hope looked around her new classroom of twenty-two students and saw only four hands raised up. Two belonged to a pair of geek gods that had the cutest smiles, but she got the feeling that the grins were smug superiority, and Hope was never into that kind of thing from a guy. Bad enough when jocks acted like jerks. When the nerds started it, the whole thing seemed especially petty.

The third guy was a bored looking boy with blue spiked hair which, she was certain, was against the handbook code of conduct, but it looked good on him. Not at all distracting.

The fourth hand belonged to a pretty red-haired girl with green eyes and freckles. Her hand was raised in a lazy way that said she'd just done what she was told, wasn't going to rub anybody's nose in it, and she was more interested in the new girl than she was in the assignment stuff anyway. She caught Hope looking at her and grinned broadly, then waved.

Hope waved back. The girl's smile widened. Hope felt her own mouth turning up in response. Well, day one and so far things didn't look absolutely horrible. Maybe she'd even made a friend. Who knew?

"Uh huh." The teacher looked around the room with one eyebrow up and her hands on her hips. "Okay, you're all dead. Remember the class pizza party?"

A collective groan went up, rapidly followed by random pleas and petitions for leniency. "Nothin' doin'," the teacher said. "You guys blew it."

"Wait." One of the two nerdlings who'd raised his hand sat up straighter and waved at the teacher again. She pointed at him. "What about us four?"

The other eyebrow went up. "What about you four?"

"We did the work!" The boy's nasal-y whining would have turned Hope off to him even if the attitude hadn't killed all chances already. "We shouldn't be punished!"

"Hector," the teacher said patiently, "when one of the football players flunks my class and I have to keep him off the team for six weeks, the entire football team suffers because of his inability to do a good job. I should know. Coach Vaughn has me on his hit list for that reason. So why should it be any different for you?" The teacher crossed her arms over her chest and looked at Hector square in the eye, one foot tapping. "The class is a team. We only work right as a team. Unless you get off your high horse and work to keep the whole team on track, then people will continue to flunk and you get to take it in the shorts with them. I'm not showing you any favoritism over the others, just because you do a good job on your own. You have to think of more than just yourself."

Hector dropped his hand flat and hard on the top of his desk, causing a loud smack that startled Hope. The teacher, undaunted, turned her eyes away from him and pointed to the seat next to the red head. "Ruby, this is Hope. Hope, Ruby. Show Hope around and get her used to everything. She'll be here in home room with you, too, next period."

Ruby smiled as Hope eased into the seat next to her. Hope had her purse and a few school supplies, but no books had been issued to her yet. Her empty hands had nothing to occupy them. She tried folding them, laying them flat, putting them in her lap, and twiddling her thumbs, but none of that made her feel any more comfortable, and the twiddling thing made her wrists hurt. Hope simply was not a twiddler.

She heard Ruby giggle and flashed a glance at the other girl. Since the teacher had launched herself into the Math lecture for the morning, they didn't really have a chance to talk, but Ruby kept glancing at her, and flashing a smile that did more to steady Hope's nerves than her failed attempt at twiddling.

After a moment, a small crumple of paper landed in the middle of Hope's desk. No, not a crumple, a... an origami swan? She glanced at Ruby, who shrugged and gestured to it. "Open me," the paper read. Feeling bad about unfolding the swan, Hope nevertheless did as requested.

_You can copy my notes. BTW Hectors trying to look at your boobs, he's a creep._

Hector, Hector… ah, yes, the whining nerdling who had gotten cross with the teacher for ruining his life by denying him pizza. Hope scanned the room until she remembered where he'd been sitting.

He was trying to make out her nipples through her blouse. It wasn't like she was wearing a skin tight outfit or anything, but the temperature in the classroom was about twenty degrees colder than the average classroom temperature, and, well… you know, girls and cold air…

He twisted his head, trying to get a good look. She lowered hers, so that he was looking her in the eye instead. Hector's eyes went very wide before he turned and faced the front, his cheeks burning red.

She managed to stifle a laugh and jotted down on the note, _He's not my type. Thnx for the notes. _Unable to fold it into a shape as appealing as Ruby's crane, Hope folded it twice in half and passed it to the other girl's hand.

Day one was off to a promising start.

* * *

"Holy God," Raph whispered.

Raphael was made of sterner stuff than most people, but even he felt his stomach do a one eighty at the gruesome sight sprawled out practically on their doorstep.

He was vaguely aware of Mike reconsidering his breakfast somewhere in the background. Donnie's voice joined. "Okay, Mikey? You need to throw up again?"

"No, no, 'sokay…" Mike sounded rough. He sounded _damn _rough, but Raph heard Donnie, so that meant Mike was being taken care of. Good, that meant Raph could focus on the situation at hand.

They had to presume that the remains belonged to a Foot soldier, given the style of the clothing bits scattered about, combined with the blood-splattered _Kama _sticking out of the near wall. The body had no skin left on it, and chunks of its flesh were missing, giving an excellent view of the bones beneath.

The damn thing was hot.

That freaked Raphael out more than anything. Even though he wasn't inclined to touch a skinless dead body, he still walked carefully around it, avoiding puddles of blood, and even at the distance he kept, he could still feel the heat radiating off of it.

Dead bodies cool at a rate of about a degree and a half per hour. He really didn't want to get close enough to take its temperature, but from what he could tell, it hadn't cooled down much. "Recent death," he murmured.

Leo walked around the other side of the corpse, looking pale and shaken, but he was holding it together a lot better than Mike was. "It almost looks like an apple," the older turtle murmured, "peeled off all at once. I don't see any skin left anywhere."

"Bottoms of the feet're skinned," Raphael noted. "Never seen shit like that before." His tone was detached and clinical. He tried keeping it that way. Raph could feel his stomach churning the longer he looked at the body, and ignored it as best he could.

"Me, neither," Leo said. The older turtle shuddered. "Raph, God, his _eyes_ are gone…"

Another level of messed up. "This ain't how I wanted ta spend my afternoon, bro."

The turtles had always had hazardous lives. They'd come to the conclusion, back when they were teenagers, that they'd never get a chance at a normal life, and had decided to live with it, rather than wallow in self-pity. Not that they didn't have moments of it, anyway, but that was all psychology shit that Donnie kept up with and Raph tried hard not to pay attention to. Let him bust a few heads, and he was fine.

But even with their particular lives, with their own personal hazards, one would think that they'd be able to run out and catch a movie without nearly tripping on a skinned corpse.

Raph fidgeted. The body was still hot, and had no skin. "Leo, how long you think it'd take ta skin a human body?"

His brother frowned over the thought, racking his brain. The elder turtle glanced back at the two still in the shadows. "Donnie, we have a medical question for you."

"Ask it over here. I'm _not_ getting any closer to that thing."

Leo stepped gingerly around several puddles of blood and went to Donnie's side. Raph continued to circle the body.

It was still hot.

Something was seriously messed up here. A skinless corpse with no eyes, you'd think that the damn thing would have started cooling off by now. Maybe whoever killed the guy had finished skinning five minutes before the turtles popped out of the sewers and headed down the alley way, but wouldn't it have started cooling before then, while it was being skinned?

"How the hell would I know!" he heard Donnie snap. Poor Don. Poor Mike, too. Neither of them enjoyed seeing this kind of gruesome display any more than their older sibs did.

Still hot, still hot… He stared at its chest. Oh, no. No, no, no… _Aw holy fuck._ "Leo, it's _still alive_!"

"_What?"_

"_What I said! It's breathin'!"_

Too much exposed muscle, too much visible bone, too much blood, neither of them knew what to do to even begin helping the body that was still breathing, in spite of its missing eyes and flesh. Raph knelt on one side, Leo hurrying over to kneel on the other.

"Donnie, what –"

"Flaying alive is fatal," Don said. He didn't sound very stable.

Raph wasn't feeling very stable, either, but he had no idea what needed to be done. "Whadda we do ta… help him?"

Don threw his hands up in the air. "How should I know? I don't go studying the various methods of murder and torture! Just, I guess, make him comfortable."

Leo started to say something, but was interrupted. The body suddenly arced, moved, threw its head back, and opened its mouth. It tossed its head around, giving Raph a brief view of its mouth, minus the tongue and skin within. The teeth jiggled loosely in the naked jaw bone.

The body writhed, tensed, and keened out a wail that made Raphael's heart hammer against his chest bone. The pitch increased, reaching the upper ranges, making Raph throw his hands over his ears and wince. Leo had his eyes scrunched closed, his own hands covering his head, so he didn't see, and he was closer than Raphael was. Raph couldn't move fast enough, but even still, he didn't know what was happening until he watched it unfolding in front of him.

One of the living corpse's hands groped blindly beneath the body, drawing a knife they couldn't see without moving him, something they weren't inclined to do. From beneath, the arm grasped, raised, brought the blade down into the bleeding chest, ONE TWO and started for three when the body collapsed, the screaming stopped, the arm fell and the knife clattered to the ground.

Raph could almost feel the body finally starting to cool.

He heard Mike dry-heaving and felt a deep sympathy. His own stomach was about to upend itself.

Leo licked his lips and stood up very slowly. Raph saw his hands shaking. "Donnie, get Mike back down. Raph, you're up. Don't go too far, but see if you can find anything. Stay hidden and for God's sake, don't engage anything! I'm calling the police; I'll catch up with you."

Donnie looked from one to the other. "Don't do anything stupid, either of you."

"We won't," Raph said. He looked away from the dead man and took off, heading up. Up, to the rooftops which were a part of their world, up where he could see but not be seen easily. Up, and as far away from the scene of death that burned into his brain as he could get without his bike and a full tank of gas.

* * *

"Finally!" Ruby stretched and was on her feet before the bell finished ringing. Hope stood as well, a little less certainly, but Ruby snatched her hand and half dragged her from the classroom. "Come on, we're in the same home room."

"Yeah, thanks. I have no idea where anything is," Hope admitted.

"You'll get used to it." Ruby flashed her a grin. "If anybody tells you that your class is on the third floor, is down the West hallway, or that you've got Miss Polkoroko for your teacher, don't believe them. Those are fish jokes, but they'll play them on newbies, too."

Hope laughed. She knew all about "fish jokes." Back home in Texas, high school freshmen were fair game. Hope never engaged in those kinds of jokes, and often tried to make corrections whenever she heard the upper classmen try to trick newbies, but in her three years, she'd heard most of them. "You're like me. You like to rescue the drowning fish."

Ruby cocked her head, looking amused. "Can fish drown?"

"On dry land they can, yes."

The red-head laughed. "I guess I never thought about that. I'm glad we've got home room together. I've been dying from curiosity. Don't worry." She lead Hope through the maze that was the upper floor of the campus. "Home room is just where they warehouse us so they can count heads and give us general announcements, and we're supposed to be doing any homework we didn't finish up, but that's a joke. Mostly we play Monopoly."

She pulled Hope through a door into the Social Studies department. There were no real classrooms. Instead, there were sections for different departments – Math, Science, Reading, and so forth – and within those sections, each "classroom" was partitioned off with temporary walls that easily slid on tracks set into the ceiling. It was a lot noisier than the individual classrooms that Hope had grown up with back home, but it did make it easier to switch classes.

Ruby released her hand when they went into their class area and hunted up a pair of chairs in the back right corner, away from the majority of the room. Hope took it as a sign that she wanted to talk privately when she was done with the registration bit. She found the home room teacher and introduced herself.

The home room teacher was a dark haired woman who might have been called young, if the light wasn't too strong. It took her five minutes to sign Hope in, far past the bell, as she hunted for the roll book, then a pencil, then a pencil that could write, and then she had to get all of Hope's information to match up with the stuff that the main office had given the home room teacher.

Once Hope had proved she was a real person and was the person they were waiting for, she collected the books issued to her and carried the stack over to the desks in the corner. "Wow. You could lift weights with these things!"

"Yeah, they're such a waste of time. We don't even use all of them, so a lot of the time your books just sit in the locker and gather dust. Or mold, depending on if you leave your gym socks in there or not."

"Not me." She dropped them onto the desktop with a loud flop and sat down primly. "I've got a very sensitive nose."

The red-head laughed again. Now that they had some time to sit and relax, Hope got a chance to look her new friend over.

Hope stood about five foot four; Ruby was probably a few inches taller, though Ruby wore shoes with a slight heel, so that might have affected things. The red-head fell into the category of "ginger," complete with the freckles and pale skin. She was also more voluptuous than Hope, though like Hope, she wore modest clothing that didn't spark the imaginations of the diverse young men in the room. Ruby's outfit was nice, a pair of black slacks and a black-and-purple dress shirt.

Hope thought she looked very professional, and wondered if Ruby had an after school job. Hope hadn't been in New York City long enough to even start looking for one. She was dressed far more casually, in jeans and a red T-shirt, and her sneakers were about two years old and showed it. But Ruth's face was an open book, with no sign that she thought any less of Hope for being less than fashionable. Besides, Hope looked more like the majority of students in the classroom than Ruby did.

Ruby said, "My nose used to be sensitive, but the lunch room killed it in the tenth grade. So, where're you from?"

"Houston." Hope settled back in her chair and slouched. "We just moved up here about a week ago."

"Really? Wow. How come you left the south?" Ruby's green eyes glistened with the romance of the Old West. Hope knew that look from hundreds of visitors to her home town. "It must be beautiful out there! Lots of trees and prairies…"

"Lots of trees, yeah, but not so many prairies. Houston's a big urban town, like New York, except that right outside of downtown there's lots of flat space open and you can see cows and horses grazing all over the place." The melting look on Ruby's face made Hope laugh again. "Don't get all misty about it. It's a land grant thing. You can hold on to land and either sell it later or build on it yourself, but you have to pay taxes on it if you're not doing anything with it. Stick some cows or horses on it and call it grazing land for livestock, you pay reduced taxes."

"Still, it sounds romantic."

"It's more funny than romantic. Mama used to work in a hotel restaurant, and one night a calf from a neighboring pasture got loose in the parking lot. It was a trip watching them try to wrangle the calf back into its pen."

Ruby appreciated the story enough to laugh, even though Hope found it less amusing and more worrisome. When one grows up around livestock, one learns quickly how dangerous animals really are.

"I like animals," Hope admitted then. "I'm thinking of being a livestock vet."

"That sounds like a fun job." Ruby made a face. "My family's big on business. I guess I'm going to take business classes or maybe go to law school next year."

Hope blinked. "Next year? I thought you were a junior."

"Nope, I'm a senior. Some of the classes are junior/senior, so you get a mixed group. Like, you can either go down the algebra path, like we are, or you can go into financial math."

"If you're thinking of getting a degree in, what? Business? Something like that. Well, why didn't you get into financial math instead of algebra?"

Ruby's green eyes unfocused slightly, and she looked somewhere over Hope's left shoulder, which Hope thought only showed a blank wall. "I like numbers. You like animals, I like numbers. I'm good at math. You don't hear too many girls say that, but I am, and I'd rather do something important than just sit in a cube all day and waste away. Sometimes I think about it, and I think I'd like to get into chemistry or biology, but what I'd _really_ like to do is work for NASA!"

Well, that was interesting. Hope wouldn't have pinned Ruby for a science buff, and this explained her fascination with Houston, home of the Johnson Space Center. "So, what would you have to do to get into NASA?"

That broke Ruby's daydream. She made a face and met Hope's eyes again. "Probably have to go into the military or something. I wouldn't be a bad soldier, I don't think, but I don't really like the idea of getting up at five in the morning and starting my day with a long run before breakfast."

"Yeah."

The problem with trying to make friends, Hope thought, was dealing with that awkward phase where you were just starting to get to know someone, and trying not to seem like a freak, but still wanting to share some of yourself with the person, without going too far. Her Mama always talked about some kind of formula to meeting a person and getting to know him; Mama had used it extensively on the Internet, particularly in chat rooms.

The trouble with face-to-face, though, was that you didn't have the anonymity of a screen name to hide behind, and you ended up being more honest, because you had to talk to someone, not stop a moment to think of something interesting to say, while blaming your pauses on the cat or something.

Hope didn't do so well on the Internet, either. Mama blamed it on the fact that she was usually shy and quiet, and preferred to have her nose in a book to hanging out with her classmates. She'd joked her daughter had been born with a book in her hands. Hope found books to be very useful, good friends, and a great distraction from daily life.

Kids, on the other hand, were usually complicated bundles of hormones that wanted to whine about boyfriends and talk about clothes and all those things that Hope didn't have a clue what to do with.

She'd never had a boyfriend, and wasn't especially interested in one, even if she did like looking occasionally. And as for clothes, well, jeans were so much more practical than the stuff Ruby was wearing, even if she did look great in her outfit. Humidity around Houston made trying to tame her nut brown hair impossible; she usually yanked it back into a tail. Sneakers were better if you wanted to go walk around in the woods near her old house. High heels weren't her thing. The one time Hope wore heels in public, she'd taken a header down a flight of stairs.

Mama had gotten on her case this morning, starting her first day of school. _"Look, baby, just _try_ to keep your head up and your nose out of a book, okay? Go meet people, have fun, find a boy to flirt with. Do something different. I'm getting tired of you moping around the house all the time, and you're driving Freddy nuts."_

Unfortunately, nowhere in there did Mama mention how Hope was supposed to handle the whole "meet people" part. At least Ruby had taken control of the situation and dragged her into a conversation. Now they were winding down the early stuff and had no idea where to go next.

Hope looked around idly. Ruby studied her polished fingernails.

"Wow," Hope said, "this conversation dried up fast."

Ruby laughed, bringing the fun back. "Want to play Monopoly? We've still got fifteen minutes."

Hope was surprised. "Can you play Monopoly in fifteen minutes?" The way Hope played, it usually took several hours and involved a lot of gloating, sneaking money from the bank, and bargaining dishes duty for a week in exchange for mortgaged properties. She and her mother didn't always play by the official rules.

Ruby grinned and headed to a cupboard. "It's as easy as drowning a fish."


	3. Chapter 2: Worry

Chapter 2

Worry

* * *

Normally, Mike would try making a game of the trip down to the lair. Normally. Things weren't normal today, though, and his stomach was still protesting. No way was he skating down into the depths tonight.

Don walked beside him. Neither of them talked, but that was okay. Right now they really just needed company, not talk. Talking would mean they'd have to think about what happened, and neither wanted to think. Bad enough they had to explain it all to Splinter when they got back to the lair.

Mike was struck by an odd thought. "Hope _Army Wives_ isn't on," he said quietly. Don cocked his head curiously at his brother and raised a brow ridge. Mike shrugged. "Hate to have to make him miss it for this."

Don's lips twitched. "Yeah, well. That's what TiVo's for."

"Wonder if Denise and Frank are gonna break up or not."

"Do you really pay any attention to that show?"

"Nah, but sometimes you can't help overhearing stuff. He really likes that TV, y'know. You did good with that one, Donnie."

Now the smile became more pronounced on his brother's face. "Maybe. I tried hard, anyway. I got tired of him having to beat the old one before the picture would clear up enough to make out what was going on."

Idle chatter was good. It kept their minds occupied on harmless pursuits. Nothing like talking stuff with wires to keep Donnie's mind away from that… No, no, don't go there. Get back to the wires. Wires were nice and safe because he didn't understand much about them. There were lots of things that Donnie could prattle on about that Mikey didn't understand, like stuff with wires, and the insides of the van, and what made someone skin another human being and leave him to die in horrible pain – "Wires!"

Don stopped and looked at him. "Wires?"

"Eh, forget it." Mike waved his hand dismissively. "I'm havin' an argument with myself about not thinking about things that I keep thinking about, except I'm losing."

Donnie blinked. "You're losing an argument to yourself?"

There was a pause, and then Mike shrugged. "What, you think you cornered the market on talking to yourself?"

"Well… no." Don looked back to the pathway they were negotiating and started walking again. It narrowed here, so they had to move in single file, with Don taking point. "But I don't usually lose arguments with myself."

"Well, do your conversations usually involve horribly mutilated bodies that aren't really dead until they are?"

He heard Donnie make a kind of a chuffing noise, but he wasn't sure if it was a hoarse laugh or his brother trying not to get sick to his stomach. "Yeah, sorry." Mike kicked out a foot at a random bit of flotsam as he walked. "My argument kinda spilled over into the real world. You know anything about something boring we could talk about?"

"That's a pretty broad category for you, Mikey." Donnie went quiet. Mike tried to think of something that wouldn't call to mind the bad images of the last few recent moments. Don spoke up suddenly. "Do you know how to make homemade wine?"

"You can make homemade wine?"

"Ah, good, you don't. I've been thinking about it." The tunnel widened, so they could walk side by side now, and they did so as they descended to their front door. "I can get an entire kit online for about a hundred dollars, have it shipped to April's apartment. They also have ingredients for sale." The path widened again, and Don moved beside his brother. He had that look he sometimes got when he was either reading something that had words with more than twenty syllables or he was trying to take apart something that looked like it might blow up.

"Aw." Mike gave him the Puppy Eyes. Nothing got Donnie out of his private little world like the Puppy Eyes. "You're not gonna let me stomp on any grapes, are you?"

Don smiled thinly. "If you got purple footprints on the ceiling, Splinter would kill me."

"I only did that the one time, and they weren't purple. They were orange."

"And then, after he killed me, he'd give me a lecture on why we don't need a foot-sized rainbow on the ceiling."

They reached the entrance to the lair and Donnie pulled the lever that opened the main door. Both stepped in, looking around, and Donnie shut up the door behind them.

Well, the lair was quiet. Either _Army Wives_ wasn't on, or else Splinter had opted to save it on TiVo to watch after breakfast in the morning. Either way, he was most likely meditating in his room. Don and Mike exchanged a glance that clearly said, _You explain it to him._

Mike hoped his brother was going to be the bigger person and give in to the Puppy Eyes again, because Mike was already having a bad flashback of the dead guy (not that he'd been dead at the time, but they didn't know that, and then the guy had fixed that, shut up Mikey, shut up, shut up, shut up!).

Don glared at him. Mike put out his lower lip in a beautiful little pout.

The glare continued for forty-two seconds, if the ticks on the clock above the stove were anywhere near accurate. Mikey debated if he ought to add some teardrops, except by the time he started sniffing, Don had already sighed and turned to Splinter's door. _Yeah, I'm good,_ Mikey thought. Any day the younger sibling could bully the older ones into submission was a good day. Okay, maybe the whole dead body thing kind of dragged that down… never mind.

At the same time, he didn't really want to leave Donnie to fend for himself. After all, it was a pretty horrific thing they both experienced, so why leave his brother alone to explain it to Splinter?

Because he could get away with it.

But what kind of answer was that?

Having once again engaged in an argument with himself that he was doomed to lose, Mikey followed on Donnie's tail as Donnie headed to Splinter's door.

Before Don could knock, they heard their father's voice saying, "Enter."

Don flashed his brother a look. "Either come in or stay out but don't stand by the door spying, okay?" he hissed.

Mikey didn't really have time to debate, since Donnie went inside right away. Momentum drove Mike forward, and, well, great, there went his whole "I perfectly manipulated my brother" thing. The two of them approached their father, knelt, and bowed.

Splinter, serene, sat akimbo with his hands on his knees. "What troubles you, my sons?" he asked them both softly.

The boys sat up and glanced at each other. "We didn't get in a fight," Donnie said, his voice soft. "It's nothing like that. There's trouble."

Splinter frowned slightly, but waited.

Don faltered. Well, of course he would, Mike realized. Donnie didn't especially like violence. He was more inclined to knock his opponents unconscious and leave the "cleaning up" of them to Raphael and Leonardo. Donnie loved sparring and being physically active, true enough, because for him, those things were a game, or a way to spend time with his brothers, but give him a choice between overhauling the van's engine and engaging in a battle royal with an enemy, he'd take the van any day.

Mike had been more shocked than anything, which is why he'd gotten sick at the sight. Probably, though, poor Donnie was still internalizing the images or whatever it was that he was doing inside that head of his. Well, hell, Mikey didn't have to be selfish all the time. Screwing around with his brothers was more fun when the situation wasn't so serious.

Biting the bullet, Mikey spoke up. "There was a dead body at the mouth of the alley way where we park the van," he said. Oddly, actually talking about it sort of put a distance between him and the images, because now he was trying to translate what was in his head into words, and that made it seem a little less real. Which was good, because he didn't want to throw up again, especially not in Splinter's room. "Only, it wasn't dead. Um, somebody skinned it." Briefly, he outlined what happened earlier, from stumbling upon the "dead" body to its scream and suicide.

Splinter paid close attention to everything Mike said, his eyes widening slightly. He interrupted only twice, to ask for clarification. Mike finished with, "Master, we found it like ten feet from the garage!"

The old rat was up, on his feet, and moving fast. There was concern on his face, but no fear. He stepped away from the boys and walked to the wall containing his library, mostly very old books written in Japanese. "You said it was a Foot soldier?" he asked Mike without looking at him. "The Foot would not torture their ninja thusly, not for punishment, or for any reason." He found what he was looking for and left the room, heading into the living area, where the light was better.

Mike and Donnie looked at each other, unsure what Splinter was getting at, but stood and followed along behind him. "Master?" Donnie asked.

Splinter sat in his chair and turned on the reading lamp beside him, throwing the book open and flipping through it rapidly. "This is a warning, but not from the Foot." He paused in his perusal to look at both his sons. "I cannot say who sent the warning. Perhaps it was coincidence that the body was found so close to our lair, but I do not believe in coincidences."

Mike was puzzled. Splinter talked like he had an idea what was going on, except he'd never hinted that he knew of nut jobs out there that skinned people alive. Their father must have seen their mutual confusion. "The Foot are not the only ones who profit from immorality, my sons. Others do exist, though they have not held sway in our city for some time. It may be that someone is challenging the Foot for rights to New York." He looked down at the book, which Mike saw was a kind of journal, with a bunch of names written down in Japanese. "It has happened before."

"So why…?"

"The body? We are eternally connected to the Foot Clan. Those who know the foot know their enemies. It may be that we are being warned, or that we are being courted for an alliance. Whatever the situation, we are not going to be involved in this. The Foot are devious, but they are not reckless. Karai would not permit her people to torture an enemy so. Whoever left us that message cannot be trusted, under any circumstances, and I will not ally myself or you to anyone so utterly depraved." He continued pouring through the list of names, looking for some kind of connection, Mike guessed.

Splinter glanced around and gestured to the coffee table. "Pencil," he said. Mike snagged one and handed it over. Splinter went down the list of names and made slight notations next to three of them. "Possibilities," he told his sons. "And none of them are good. Michaelangelo, Donatello, you must go and find your brothers. Return home at once. Err on the side of caution, and return quickly. Do not allow Raphael to go out on his own any more than he has already. We will discuss our options fully when the four of you return."

"Yes, sensei," the two said in unison. Both bowed and hurried out. Don flashed a look at his brother. "You think he's right? Someone stalking the Foot Clan?"

"Beats the hell outta me, Donnie," Mike shrugged. They hurried through the sewer. "I never knew there were other people out there tryin' to screw the Foot over."

"I guess it makes sense, though." Don stepped up his pace and once again preceded his brother through the narrow space in the sewer. "I mean, we had to figure there were people buying and selling all the stuff the Foot were stealing and producing, right? So maybe one of them got fed up with the Foot and decided to take over. Cut the middle man out or something."

"Damn, Donnie, you make it sound like a business."

"Crime _is_ a business, Mikey. People make a lot of money off of it." When they could walk beside each other again, Don put his hand on his brother's shoulder. "But it kind of fits. The Foot make a lot of money off of drugs. And really, who'd do something as crazy as what we saw up there, except someone whose brain was fried."

Mike found the ladder up to the manhole inside the garage. "Cops'll be around, right?"

"Leo said he was calling them. Back door." The two of them emerged and headed to the back of the enclosed space that acted as their garage, really a brick false front that divided the alley up so that their hiding space wasn't easily seen. They had a second entrance, much smaller, back there.

Mike stopped on the threshold and looked over his shoulder at his brother. "Hey, Donnie… you worried?"

"Hell, yes, I'm worried." Don flashed him a smile that was only a little forced. "But we can kick it, whatever _it_ is. We always have before."

It wasn't a great boost, but the boys, fortified in each other, were a little more confident as they headed out into the night.


	4. Chapter 3: Life, Death

Chapter 3

Life, Death, Things of That Nature

Author's Note - This part is currently incomplete, but I'm still working on it. We had a death in the family recently, I didn't lose my new job (Yay!) and I didn't take another job offered to me (Yay! - no, really, this is a good thing), and finally, my father, a cancer survivor with diabetes, didn't end up in the hospital with leg problems (Tripple YAY and a WOOT!).

Life's been a little hairy since my uncle Len died, so I haven't been able to publish or write a whole lot, but I finally got to the point where I knew that Ch. 3 is almost finished, so I'm happily working along on it. I'll keep writing.

Please keep in mind that nothing here is edited yet, and won't be until the story is finished, so if you see plot holes or what have you, they *will* be dealt with, later.

***

The guys didn't normally patrol in the daytime. Too much light meant more chance of being spotted and ending up with your mug on the six o'clock news. To every rule there was an exception, though, and the dead body qualified. They had to move quickly but carefully out in the afternoon traffic.

Leo found Raph waiting for him on the balcony of some abandoned apartment building, watching the world go by. New York City streets always seemed so fast-paced in action movies, where heroes drove ninety as they dodged pedestrians and avoided swissing bullets, a flash flood of motion. Reality was a lazy river of metal, with puddles of humanity here and there in the eddies of the street corners. Everybody moved constantly along with the tide, out to work, in to home, out again for the night or the weekend, drawn by its own gravity, rather than the moon on her peek days.

Leonardo joined him on the balcony and leaned against the railing. "The cops are there. How've things looked so far?"

Raph gave a half-shrug. "No other dead bodies. Can't believe the poor bastard was still alive through all that."

In his mind's eye, Leo saw the arm go up and down, the blade go into the man's chest. He briefly shut his eyes in sympathy. "He was a Foot soldier," he said, "meaning Karai might know what's going on, or at least have an idea of what happened to him."

"Karai's fruiter 'en a nut cake," Raph said, lazily twirling a _sai_ around his right index finger, "but she wouldn't go in for recreational torture and human skin bibliopegy."

Leo's meditative calm died a violent death, and his eyes flew open. "Biblio-_what?_"

Raph's lips set in a tight line that wasn't quite a smile. "You dunno what bibliopegy is?"

"What amazes me more is that you _do_."

"Jesus," Raph rolled his eyes, "ya make it seem like I ain't related to the freak that makes his own transistor radios outta scrap. Donnie wants ta get Splinter's copy of _The Three Musketeers_ rebound for Christmas."

"He never said anything about it to me."

"Yer a great brother, Leo, but ya can't keep a secret for shit."

Leo took a moment to do the mental math on whether, as a whole, that sentence added up to an insult. He decided it did, and decided to ignore it. "Bibliopegy being book-binding, then. Well, no sign of what happened to the skin. No sign of a struggle, either. He was probably skinned somewhere else and dumped there –"

"Whoa, whoa, back up." Raph raised a hand and looked at his brother severely. "The clothes were all tore up an' the guy's _kama_ got nailed to a wall back there, all bloodied up, too. The alley was a wreck."

Leo blinked in recollection of the scene, frowning. "But the only blood there was on the Kama and directly beneath the body. From the way it looked, the blood was pooled under the body like it had dripped down."

"There's an image Alzheimer's ain't gonna erase."

"No. But if there was a struggle, wouldn't there be more blood elsewhere?"

"Who're you, Gil Grissom now?"

Leo frowned at his brother's glib tongue. "Think for a moment, will you? In battle, whenever there's bloodshed of any type, there's always blood all over the place. You can't control the arc of motion enough to keep it from spreading. There wasn't any blood _except on the _kama_ and directly under the body!_ And don't forget, he was laying on top of that short blade he killed himself with, but didn't have anything else around. Somebody could have placed it on the ground and then dropped his body on top. It looks less like an attack and more like it was staged, if you ask me."

Raph followed along as his brother spoke. He had a great memory and could almost see places he'd been before as if he were looking at a photograph, just by picturing where he'd been. Leo and their brothers had used that talent of Raph's before, to help them locate emergency exits that they might have missed when going into buildings. Raph got that far-away look that told Leo he was back at the scene, seeing it again.

"Body mighta been dumped, scene coulda been staged, but that's a damn lot of stagin' just to impress us. Clothes were torn up, looked like they'd been ripped offa him. An' Leo, if he'd been skinned somewhere else, they didn't do too good a job skinnin' him. Took meat offa him, too. So how'd he survive a messy, botched skinnin' like that, _and_ the trip out to our lair?"

For that, Leo had no answer.

"Look, bro, bugs the shit outta me, too, but we gotta leave that stuff to the cops and the CSI teams. Donnie might come up with somethin', or he might not. Doesn't matter. What _we_ have to figure out is who killed the guy an' why, an' what it might have ta do with us. Don't gotta worry about how the guy died."

"It might be important." As Leo spoke, both he and Raphael became aware of two shadows, in the distance, separating from the midday shade. Since they knew Donnie and Mikey from a hundred yards away, neither Leo nor Raph worried.

Raph raised his brow at his brother. "No, Leo, it ain't. We ain't forensic experts. Not our calling. We just gotta make sure it never happens again, right? I don't give a damn about motive or method. I wanna make sure what happened to that guy don't happen to anybody else."

Donnie and Mike crossed from the roof of the nearby building to the apartment balcony in time to hear that. "Woman," Donnie corrected.

Both Leo and Raphael stopped to look at him, brows raised on both of them now.

Leo noted Mike looked a little pale and was playing with his 'chucks nervously. Donnie continued, "Before we came looking for you, we stopped to check out the team working the crime scene. One of the techies said the body was a woman."

That would explain the high-pitched scream, Leo decided. He wasn't surprised they had assumed the body belonged to a man: none of them had taken a good look at the body, so details like hip size were lost on the turtles, and Leonardo certainly didn't have a clue what breast tissue looked like from the inside, so either she was a small-breasted woman and they'd all honestly been unaware, or her mammary glands had been removed in the skinning. As for external genitalia, there hadn't been any of either variety for quick observation, and none of them were inclined to look at the corpse _there_.

"Ugh," Raph said. "Didn't need to hear that, thanks, Donnie."

"Splinter wants us home," Mike said. "Like, yesterday. He was looking up something and wants to talk to us. Guys?" Leo hated seeing Michelangelo looking so stressed. He'd have bet good money his brother's eyes had dark circles beneath them, hidden by his mask. "Can we please just _go?_ The longer we're out here the more freaked out I get."

"We're going, Mikey. What's wrong?" Leo asked.

"I dunno. I don't want to think about it anymore. Let's go and let Splinter figure it out, okay?" He shoved his _nunchucks _in the sheathes along his belt and used both hands to propel himself forward, off the balcony, without waiting for the others.

Leo saw Donatello goggled after Mike while wearing a long frown. Don did his level best to keep an eye on their mental state, leaving keeping them all in good spirits to Mikey. Mike handled crises by getting quiet and waiting for someone to plot out a workable strategy, and then started with the wise-cracking right away. This abruptness and stress left them all unsettled.

"We better catch up to him," Leo said. "Splinter's still waiting on us." With a wave of his arm, he lead the others off the balcony and into the noonday shadows.

***

The rest of school turned out not to be the ordeal that Hope was anticipating. She had to finish up with gym, which stank on more than one level, but that was okay – Ruby was there again. Gym class was fairly easy, taking advantage of the pretty weather to let the kids walk or jog the track. Ruby and Hope power-walked and chatted about the usual inconsequential things kids discuss during forced exercise. Hope mentioned she had a Wii Fit that was a lot more fun than wandering around a track; Ruby expressed a hope to see it. Ruby mentioned she didn't like her English teacher. Hope sympathized.

October was usually fairly cool in New York, whereas Hope was used to highs in the low 90s down south. Today was a little warmer than average and fairly humid, and while they weren't running the track, they were moving at a brisk enough pace to work up a sweat. The coach told everyone to hit the showers. More gossiping amidst the closed curtains and the billowing steam (hey, it was the school's water bill, right?), though she made it as fast as she could, trying to avoid having to be naked around so many strangers for very long.

In the dressing area she had her bra and panties back on, and was sliding into her jeans when she heard Ruby gasp quietly. "What a funky tattoo!" the red-head commented.

Hope fastened her jeans and bent her left shoulder forward slightly, craning her neck to look down her back. "It's not a tattoo," she said. "It's a birth mark."

People always thought her birthmark was a tattoo, and no surprise, given that it looked almost like a perfect hourglass. She had a bunch of photographs in her baby book immediately after her birth, taken by the doctor and two nurses, who were concerned at first that it might be a malignant growth of some sort. Instead, a biopsy showed it was a harmless skin discoloring, nothing worse than a large and strangely-shaped freckle. The doctors had looked on her parents curiously, but they didn't have any explanation, either. Everyone chalked it up to "one of those things," and never really thought much about it.

Strangers, though, always thought it fascinating, and few believed her that it wasn't a tattoo. She figured that Ruby was going to be another one insisting that she'd gotten it done somewhere, but the red-head surprised her. Ruby just smiled and nodded and whistled to herself before saying, "Do you want to come over tonight?"

"Can't," Hope said, pulling on her blouse. "I have to help the neighbor lady with something." At Ruby's visibly disappointed face she added, "I promised that I'd help."

"Oh." The cheerful look was gone. "Well, if you're sure. I mean, you're always welcome."

"Maybe tomorrow night," Hope offered. The other girl smiled and nodded, but this wasn't the same kind of satisfied smile she'd just flashed. Hope wondered if Ruby wasn't one of those New Yorkers who tried so hard to undermine the city's reputation for being full of snobs, rude people, and all the rest of the bad rap that they'd gotten. Freddy had warned that some folks would look down on Hope and her mother for being from Hicksville, while others would try too hard to be nice and act like they were peaches, only to turn around and act like scum around the people they'd known for years. He'd also warned that the latter group was probably more annoying. At least the first group was genuine.

A little disappointed to think that the one friend she'd made was probably thinking to impress the bumpkin with her kindness, Hope smiled anyway and said, "I'm hitting the road. I'll see you in class tomorrow, right?"

"Right," Ruby said, and waved as Hope finished tying off her shoelaces, snagged her books, and headed out the gym door just as the final dismissal bell rang.

No bus ride home, and that was good. Freddy was waiting for her in the student drop-off/pickup area, leaning against his car. "About time you got here," he said with a grin, and opened the back seat door for her. He had to. Patrol cars were designed to only open the back seat doors from the outside, just as a precaution.

She didn't have a lot of room back there, what with the safety wall between her and the front seat and all, but managed to squeeze herself and her stuff in, while everyone around her gawked.

Riding home in a patrol car had its perks, even if one was riding in the back seat.

Even before they'd moved to New York to be with her mother's new boyfriend, Hope had known that he was a patrol officer, but hadn't realized how it would affect their days. Her mother had found a job as a day nurse in a geriatric ward, while Freddy worked the evening shift, so there was always someone around. And Freddy worked an alternating pattern of days – four twelve-hour days one week, three twelve-hour days the next, with every other Saturday off and a guarantee of four hours of overtime. So every other weekend she had both of them around to talk to. That was good. When they first moved up, Hope had felt a little scared that she'd be stuck in a lonely apartment by herself all the time.

But even if the "grown-ups" weren't always around, the neighbors in the building where great. The lady she was helping paint her apartment was, for one thing. Hope didn't like excessive physical labor anymore than the next teen, but she was really looking forward to helping Gio out with her living room walls.

Freddy locked her in tight, mock-saluted a pair of by-standing sophomores that gawked at them, and got in the driver's seat. He had to wiggle a bit, being in his uniform still. Ordinarily he'd have been off all day today, but one of the guys on day shift had come down with H1N1, aka the Swine Flu, and Freddy jumped on the chance for some overtime. Christmas was coming up. He and Hope's mom were intending to pick up as much extra cash as they could, with the intention of making it a really special holiday this year. So, since Freddy was responsible for picking up Hope while her mother still worked, he came directly from the beat, gun and all.

It was quite a way to make an impression, she decided, seeing Ruby pop out of the gym door and do a double-take. Ruby waved again, limply, and Hope wondered if she didn't possibly have something against police officers. Oh well.


End file.
